It is known to provide a forming press and tooling to form the end turns of the wound wire coils of a stator into an annulus of given external and internal diameters and axial length in a three stage process in which outer segments of the tooling contract to compress the end turns to define the outer diameter of the annulus, inner segments of the tooling expand to compress the end turns to define the inner diameter of the annulus and an annular end member is moved axially against the end turns to compress the end turns to define the axial length of the annulus.
A problem associated with the known tooling is that during the movement of the inner and outer segments and/or the end member, it is sometimes possible for the wire of the end turns to become trapped between the parts of the tooling so that the coils are damaged.
It is an object of the invention to provide tooling which will prevent or at least mitigate this problem.